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The car business is a stern taskmaster. Netherlands-based Atlas Technologies (Atlas) producing Lightyear – set to be the world’s first mass produced solar car – filed for bankruptcy. The “Lightyear 0” – the company’s debut car – was to run 725km, with 70km coming from solar & the rest from electric charging (the company had assumed 40% of drivers would never have to charge the car at all). It was slated to go on sale for $250k in 2023. Atlas Technologies struck a deal with Finland-based Valmet Automotive to start manufacturing it in December 2022. At a rate of 1 per week, only a few cars were produced before the company abruptly halted production, so it could focus all its attention on getting its second car, the “Lighyear 2” – with specs about half & tentatively priced >$40k – into production by 2025. Post CES unveiling, car leasing giant Arval had even pre-ordered 10,000 units alongside 40,000 individuals (but no cash was exchanged). So as these things go, “the end of the money came before the end of the dream” & Atlas “could no longer pay salaries”. The bankruptcy is complicated by the fact that Atlas has a sister company, Lightyear Layer, which makes solar panels, that has not been declared bankrupt, & both are owned by a holding company that hasn’t been declared bankrupt either. Then there’s the question to what extent Lightyears’ IP rights also fall under the bankruptcy. All in all, complicated stuff, which Atlas’s administrator Reinoud van Oeijen will have to sort out. In the meantime, the 630 employees who worked on the Lightyear at Atlas have been laid off, but there are still about 20 who will remain as a solution is sought for the solar panel subsidiary (salaries there have been taken over by benefits agency UWV for now). Generally speaking, it’s choppy times for European EV startups across the board: UK-based Arrival (which mainly builds electric vans) keeps announcing massive job cuts & Lightyear’s direct competitor, German-based Sonos Motors, is known to have to raise additional capital too (…mind you, American peers like Aptera, even with striking design, aren’t doing much better). Perhaps then, while using sunlight to power an automobile sounds great in theory, it’s less than ideal in practice, as there really isn’t enough surface area (on a typical automobile) to mount sufficient solar cells to significantly add to the battery’s state of charge (which obviously hasn’t kept backyard mechanics bolting solar panels to the roof of their cars & there was even a company a few years ago that sold a “solar car cover”, but we’ll digress). Lightyear was founded in 2016 by Lex Hoefsloot (CEO), Arjo van der Ham (CTO), Martijn Lammers (Chief Strategy), Qurein Biewenga (Treasurer, prev. CFO) – all Solar Team Eindoven alumni. <Source: sifted.eu, cleantechnica.com, autoblog.com, nltimes.nl, siliconcanals.com>
